5 ms·

I could not disagree more with this take. >Within science, many ideas are "controversial" because they're demonstrably wrong. Such ideas should not be "publish

I could not disagree more with this take. >Within science, many ideas are "controversial" because they're demonstrably wrong. Such ideas should not be "published" in a "journal" in some misguided attempt to give them the exposure they're justifiably denied everywhere else, that's not how science works. (example off the top of my head: chiropractics and other psuedoscientific nonsense) They absolutely should be published. How else can I, as a scientist, be able to determine what is right and what is wrong? For example, in my field there was a small scandal regarding the publication and claims of a macromolecular structure, and to what resolution they had been solved. http://xray0.princeton.edu/~phil/Facility/Guides/ABCtransporter.html http://xray0.princeton.edu/~phil/Facility/Guides/ABCtranspor... I'm glad those papers were published because the truth was eventually determined, and nearly everyone in the field had a good lesson to learn from it. Not all the same lesson, either. Don't gatekeep - just falsify. Otherwise we won't know when we end up wrong.

jkhdigital 5y ago
> Don't gatekeep - just falsify. Amen. Gatekeeping is not science.
- not2b 5y ago
  So, everyone who claims to have invented a perpetual motion machine that produces free energy just gets published, because to do otherwise is "gatekeeping" and "not science"? No, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and simply submitting such claims without evidence and then whining about being censored isn't science.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    I don't know if you really need extraordinarily strong evidence for perpetual motion. Just plausible evidence for every aspect of physics which must be changed because of it. If you forget to consider existing experimental evidence for, say, conservation of momentum and just quietly assume it doesn't hold or fail to notice the impact on it, that wouldn't be rigorous. But if you show that all such experiments were done with error greater than what's needed for your perpetual motion, it should be fine.
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    Peer-reviewed publication != science
- wittycardio 5y ago
  A certain amount of gatekeeping is necessary for good science in the modern world. This isn't the 15th century where anyone can verify the results of scientific experiments. Scientific research is often expensive and complex and isn't accessible to the average person.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  Gatekeeping is essentially the only service provided by journals. We could argue about whether it is actually a useful service, but anti-gatekeeping journal seems like a contradiction.
joshuamorton 5y ago
I'm not sure I can agree with this. Are you suggesting that we should knowingly publish work we are certain will later be withdrawn due to factual errors?
joe_the_user 5y ago
The thing about the situation is that you ideas accepted by the mainstream, that may or may not be true (I have more faith in physics than experimental psychology). Then you have ideas which contradict this mainstream, "alternative approach" or whatever you want to call them. Some of these might be true. Speaking rough, an alternative approach that has a constituency becomes that constituency publicizes it anyway and the mainstream dissents. Those constituency will naturally be the ones publishing those dissident ideas. And they should have a right to publish them and make them available. IE, it seems as if there'd be no reason to publish X just because it's controversial, if X is controversial, it has proponents and they can be the ones publishing it, not because it's controversial but because they believe it. The thing is, there's a certain kind of position where the constituency doesn't want to be too identified with the ideas even if they hold them - usually ideas considered "hateful", a common example is racist positions and related opinions. Here, "I'm put this out because it's controversial, not because I believe it" is a common trope and I find it disingenuous.
bedobi 5y ago
Thanks for the link, it was a good example of something worth clearing up. But I'm not sure things like chiropractics is comparable to your example - it's trash, we know it's trash and having a journal where people argue the merits of it and other similar trash would just be psuedoscience cargo culting the peer review process to lend itself an air or superficial legitimacy. Which is fine I guess, because sane people will just ignore such "journals". But it is a shame that this particular "journal" initiative chose to focus on nonsense instead of filling a niche that might actually use filling - a legit journal for ideas that do have evidence behind them, but are still controversial for other reasons, and risk not getting published as a result. A good example might be where ancestry meets medicine and biology, which has been justifiably kind of banned from public discourse due to its long and sad history of racist nonsense, but which if legitimately studied could save and improve lives - eg, there's the fairly widely known example of the blood thinning medicine that works for "white" people but not for "black" people. (a gross oversimplification, as our social construct "race" labels are just that, social constructs, and are terrible proxies for actual underlying genes, but still, if people don't study and publish these things, disadvantaged groups are made even more disadvantaged by being prescribed treatments that work for others but not for them, which is terrible)
- 6510 5y ago
  > But I'm not sure things like chiropractics is comparable to your example I'm not doing an opinion about the topic as I'm completely unfamiliar with it but it seems disqualified from the scope as there are plenty of journals that do papers about chiropractic medicine. https://chiro.org/LINKS/journal.shtml#Journals https://chiro.org/LINKS/journal.shtml#Journals https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-chiropractic-medicine https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-chiropractic-me...

jkhdigital 5y ago

> Don't gatekeep - just falsify. Amen. Gatekeeping is not science.

not2b 5y ago
So, everyone who claims to have invented a perpetual motion machine that produces free energy just gets published, because to do otherwise is "gatekeeping" and "not science"? No, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and simply submitting such claims without evidence and then whining about being censored isn't science.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  I don't know if you really need extraordinarily strong evidence for perpetual motion. Just plausible evidence for every aspect of physics which must be changed because of it. If you forget to consider existing experimental evidence for, say, conservation of momentum and just quietly assume it doesn't hold or fail to notice the impact on it, that wouldn't be rigorous. But if you show that all such experiments were done with error greater than what's needed for your perpetual motion, it should be fine.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  Peer-reviewed publication != science
wittycardio 5y ago
A certain amount of gatekeeping is necessary for good science in the modern world. This isn't the 15th century where anyone can verify the results of scientific experiments. Scientific research is often expensive and complex and isn't accessible to the average person.
bee_rider 5y ago
Gatekeeping is essentially the only service provided by journals. We could argue about whether it is actually a useful service, but anti-gatekeeping journal seems like a contradiction.

joshuamorton 5y ago

I'm not sure I can agree with this. Are you suggesting that we should knowingly publish work we are certain will later be withdrawn due to factual errors?

joe_the_user 5y ago

The thing about the situation is that you ideas accepted by the mainstream, that may or may not be true (I have more faith in physics than experimental psychology). Then you have ideas which contradict this mainstream, "alternative approach" or whatever you want to call them. Some of these might be true. Speaking rough, an alternative approach that has a constituency becomes that constituency publicizes it anyway and the mainstream dissents. Those constituency will naturally be the ones publishing those dissident ideas. And they should have a right to publish them and make them available. IE, it seems as if there'd be no reason to publish X just because it's controversial, if X is controversial, it has proponents and they can be the ones publishing it, not because it's controversial but because they believe it. The thing is, there's a certain kind of position where the constituency doesn't want to be too identified with the ideas even if they hold them - usually ideas considered "hateful", a common example is racist positions and related opinions. Here, "I'm put this out because it's controversial, not because I believe it" is a common trope and I find it disingenuous.

bedobi 5y ago

Thanks for the link, it was a good example of something worth clearing up. But I'm not sure things like chiropractics is comparable to your example - it's trash, we know it's trash and having a journal where people argue the merits of it and other similar trash would just be psuedoscience cargo culting the peer review process to lend itself an air or superficial legitimacy. Which is fine I guess, because sane people will just ignore such "journals". But it is a shame that this particular "journal" initiative chose to focus on nonsense instead of filling a niche that might actually use filling - a legit journal for ideas that do have evidence behind them, but are still controversial for other reasons, and risk not getting published as a result. A good example might be where ancestry meets medicine and biology, which has been justifiably kind of banned from public discourse due to its long and sad history of racist nonsense, but which if legitimately studied could save and improve lives - eg, there's the fairly widely known example of the blood thinning medicine that works for "white" people but not for "black" people. (a gross oversimplification, as our social construct "race" labels are just that, social constructs, and are terrible proxies for actual underlying genes, but still, if people don't study and publish these things, disadvantaged groups are made even more disadvantaged by being prescribed treatments that work for others but not for them, which is terrible)

6510 5y ago
> But I'm not sure things like chiropractics is comparable to your example I'm not doing an opinion about the topic as I'm completely unfamiliar with it but it seems disqualified from the scope as there are plenty of journals that do papers about chiropractic medicine. https://chiro.org/LINKS/journal.shtml#Journals https://chiro.org/LINKS/journal.shtml#Journals https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-chiropractic-medicine https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-chiropractic-me...